Episode 4.02 Czeslaw Milosz’s “And Yet The Books”
Hiking in the snow is always harder than hiking on dirt, but there's still snow on the ground and so I'll take what I can get. The cold does present one particular difficulty, of course, that it makes my nose run and I have to edit out about a thousand sniffs. I didn't get them all, and for that I apologize.
I also apologize for my pronunciation of Milosz's name. That's another thing that I had to edit out. I'm mostly consistent here with mill-osh but only sometimes. I think I edited out every time I said mish-losh or mlil-loss or any other travesty. The nice thing here is that I can at least edit it out. In front of a classroom, I just have to hope that the students were too focused on the actual substance to ignore my butchery.
Also, I edited out a whole long section where I started ranting a little bit about the importance of books that you don't agree with. It was too political, and not going to help anyone understand this wonderful poem, and so through the magic of editing, it has vanished into the ether.
Lastly, it's pretty obvious that this isn't a studio recording where I am sitting in some studio (read: my home office/bedroom) and adding in effects for ambiance. These really are recorded in the field, while I'm (usually) hiking, and dealing with whatever happens to me out there. I'm not working from notes, except for the text of the poem, and sometimes I have to pause to think or remember what I was going to say. Sometimes I encounter other people on the trail and need to stop because I'm self-conscious. And sometimes I am just physically clumsy. No, it wouldn't make a good comedy--it's much too pathetic for that.
TEXT OF POEM"And Yet The Books" by Czeslaw Milosz
And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
"We are, " they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it's still a strange pageant,
Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.
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